The Place For My Writers Notes

original posting: Sat, 7 Aug 1993 17:57:01 JST

FAQ: Shock Treatment

I'm glad I never claimed to be a medical writer. Still, maybe this'll get some hearts beating...

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Shock Treatment

The body was still, unmoving on the table under the bright lights. The ER staff seemed to be moving twice as fast in compensation.

"What have we got here, Doctor?"

"OD'd. Full stop. And nothing seems to get him started again."

The traces on the monitors were flat.

"OK, I'll take charge now. Nurse! Yes, you. Quickly, 100 lines of Walt Whitman, right to the heart. Stet!"

"Now, you. Keep those pages of Faulkner turning. Steady, now, feed it to him steady."

"OK, Doctor, if you'd take the P.G. Wodehouse and apply it, we'll see if there's any reaction."

"What about Thurber?"

"Well, some times. Try one, then the other. But I'm afraid..."

The team moved. Still, the traces were flat.

"All right, everyone. I'm going to try one more thing. Clear!"

The body convulsed. The traces all jumped, then settled down.

Then, as everyone watched, one ticked. Another ticked. Bump, whoosh, bump, bump, bump, whoosh.


The young intern shook the older doctor's hand.

"Amazing. Simply amazing. What was that last dosage, Doctor?"

The older doctor leaned forward, letting a nurse wipe his forehead.

"That? Oh. Pure, hard SF. It's always a shock to the system, but I think it did the trick. I was ready to try space opera if that failed..."

The young intern nodded.

"Yes, I've heard of it, but I'd never seen it. Well, now I'm a believer. Uh, what kind of treatment would you prescribe for maintenance?"

The older doctor glanced once at the body, then at the intern.

"Keep him hooked up to WRITERS for a while, at least."

The intern grimaced.

"Yes, he'll have some disorientation, maybe some confusion. But remember, you're dealing with a serious block, and that's the best treatment I know for it."

The intern nodded.

"Well, I suppose. Imagine, a mainstream writer OD'd like that on mass media. Classical, grand writer's block. I know it happens a lot, but I hate to see them wasted like that."

The older doctor squeezed the intern's shoulder.

"Don't worry, you'll learn. Just keep those pages flowing, and .. oh, no T.V. in ICU, ok? When he comes to, would you let me know?"

"Sure, but why?"

"Well, as long as he's here, I've got this great idea for a book..."

If you get blocked, battered, or even bored, try WRITERS!
Recommended by better writing treatment centers everywhere...
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original posting: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 22:26:27 -0400

Did you do your morning pages today?

For some of you, this may be a familiar phrase.  For others, I'll provide an explanation.

I'm going to start a series of exercises based on The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.  This was a popular book... copyright is 1992.  I'd had it on my list of "I ought to look at this" for a while, and recently stumbled over a stack in a local "super bargain" store, so I bought one.

Right off the bat, Julia proposes a daily discipline: the morning pages. The idea is to start your day by writing three pages.  Not for readers, not necessarily good writing, just let your fingers (pen, brush, keyboard, etc.) go.  Fill the pages and turn them over.  Put them away, these are not for the editor (she recommends NOT looking at what you've written for eight weeks!).  This is time for your id to dance on the pages, for the inner child to peek out from under the edge of the cardboard box, for all those urges to creativity that your inner censor considers incense to catch fire (what the heck was that?  oh, keep going!).

From the book:

"What are morning pages?  Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness."

"There is no wrong way to do morning pages.  These daily morning meanderings are not meant to be art.  Or even writing.  ... pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing down whatever comes to mind.  Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included."

"The morning pages are the primary tool of creative recovery.  As blocked artists, we tend to criticize ourselves mercilessly.  Even if we look like functioning artists to the world, we feel we never doing enough and what we do isn't right.  We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth.  The Censor says wonderful things like: 'You call that writing?  What a joke.  You can't even punctuate.  If you haven't done it by now you never will.  You can't even spell.  What makes you think you can be creative?'  And on and on."

Meditation, unbinding the wizard within, trash, a way to deal with fears and despair and boredom, whatever you want to call them, the morning pages are a discipline for creativity.

So what are you waiting for?  Decide now that tomorrow morning, first thing, you'll write three pages.  Not writer's writing, just letting brain race, letting the monkey sniff and scratch, letting the world settle into being so that you can breathe.

And so that when you can say to yourself, "Yes, I did my morning pages today."

Write.

(next time -- dating your artist?  or how I learned to spend quality time with myself...)

original posting: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 18:35:02 JST

Since I'm re-reading "Becoming a Technical Leader" by Gerald Weinberg (ISBN 0-932633-02-1) and someone asked about finishing pieces...

Weinberg suggests that change happens when the environment has three ingredients:

Motivation--trophies, rewards, trouble, some push or pull that moves the people involved. So consider what kind of reward you'll have when you finish a piece. Make it something you like or want, something you can control, and something that you won't let yourself have if you don't finish.

Organization--the existing structure that enables the ideas to be worked through into practice. Outlines, old plots, some of those books on writing that gather dust in many libraries, or some other skeleton that lets you work through the idea to the end. Or maybe knowing that you promised this bunch that you would finish (even if the promise is all in your own mind!). Make sure there is a method and steps to reach the goal behind your madness, then do it.

Ideas or innovation--the seeds, the image of what will become. You need some idea of what you are trying to build as a whole. Is it a novel, short story, poem? What genre? What kinds of writing skills are you trying to build up this time (e.g. maybe you really want to put in pages and pages of dialogue, or action-packed narrative, or even the lazy description of the countryside)? Take at least a few moments to dream about what kind of overall structure you are working on. Some people do well with a detailed outline, others just jot a few notes about the main points, and some scribble a note about the ending, then set out boldly. Whatever method you prefer, give yourself a chance to think about the whole work every now and then--step back from the canvas and look at the piece as a whole.

Okay? So set yourself up with motivation, organization, and ideas, then write!

Since the flow of ideas is often talked about as the stumbling point, let's see what Weinberg suggests about how to manage that process:

1. Contribute clever ideas--or at least grab them and hold onto them when they come by (he mentions that there are very few new ideas).

2. Encourage copying useful ideas. read about them, summarize them in your own terms, study, and steal proudly (be careful to mix them up and sand off the labels so they look more like your ideas...)

3. Elaborate on ideas. polish, rearrange, and perfect the ideas. Don't be afraid to reuse your own notions, extended, simplified, and in a different spotlight...

4. Let go of ideas when another one wants to be developed, and don't let an idea drop until you have finished it. Contradictory! But you need to be able to let go of some ideas when something else really calls to you--and you need to make sure you have taken an idea you are working on as far as possible before you drop it. At least make notes so you can come back to it later.

5. Resist time pressure, and take the time to listen to yourself explain your own idea. One of the hardest parts of developing an idea is slowing down enough to really let yourself develop it. I find myself making fevered little notes and scraps...then losing interest. BUT if I put those away and wait a while, then come back, there often is a good idea in there (after I throw away some of the froth that came with the first enthusiasm). It's important not to hurry it, either in the development or in the discarding.

6. Try ideas suggested by other people. Luckily, we aren't restricted to inventing everything ourselves. There are books and magazines out there full of writing, discussions of writing, and other interesting topics. Dig through some of that and borrow...

7. Withhold quick criticism of ideas. Don't shoot down your own ideas too fast. Give yourself a while to work with it, develop it, let it link up with other ideas, and so on.

8. When you do criticize the idea, be careful to criticize the idea, not yourself. Even smart people have stupid ideas. Don't cut yourself down--just chop the idea into kindling for the next mindblaze, and go on with the knowledge that you are stronger, smarter, and a real thinker for having the idea, even if it was a bit wild.

9. Test your own ideas before spending much time on them. There are lots of ideas around. Admittedly, you don't want to kill off a notion too fast, but you also don't need to spend the next 20 years trying to force one idea into words. If you don't see how to develop it now--make a note, and go on to something else.

10. (and the companion notion) When the time comes, stop working on new ideas and pitch in! Sometimes forcing yourself to work on that notion, even if it isn't clear or you aren't quite sure what to do with it, will help. An easy trap is to keep looking for the next good idea...and never spend the time to finish one.

My own trick to this is to set a quota--five new ideas or ten, something like that. Lay them out fast and furious, then pick one that looks best and start working on turning that into a complete story. If I can't get anywhere with it, I've still got several ideas to "fall back" on, but usually I can work that one out. But I make myself stop dreaming up new ideas and get down to the nitty-gritty (sometimes), even though I really like coming up with ideas more than finishing them...

11. Don't be afraid to drop ideas that had succeeded earlier, but don't extend to the present situation. E.g., maybe one of our Dead White Males could get away with massive chapters detailing the exact methods of fishing for mammals and rendering the results, but most publishers aren't very interested in seeing a chapter like that now. Or maybe you've started every story with a line of dialogue, but it doesn't seem to be working for your current story.

12. Revive ideas later, when they fit another part of the problem. Those discarded ideas or methods may be just the right thing at a different point. Don't be afraid to change your mind, and write the second chapter from the pet's viewpoint, or whatever...

So--motivate yourself, organize yourself, and get those ideas rolling. Then manage the flow of ideas so that you know which one you are working on now, and don't stop the flow for later, but don't get drowned in it while you are polishing one glittering gem...

But don't forget that there are lots of gems in the flow, so don't get too hung up on today's piece of fool's gold, either.

Mostly, write!

original posting: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 10:51:36 JST

Toad hopped up on the trunk and grunted

1. Take a long, hard look in your magic mirror (whatever method you prefer for plumbing yourself - meditation, brainstorming, reading tea leaves, whatever). Identify, diagnose, look at what's going on with you - I get lost when people tell me they itch, but don't want to clarify it any further. I can pretty well guarantee that reputable doctors (mechanics, psychxxx people, etc.) won't let you just name a symptom and prescribe a potion, lotion, or other quick fix - they want details, they want to look, they want to make sure which problem it is. You deserve to give yourself the same level of care (at least!).

What I'm saying is that "writers block" covers a multitude of hold-ups. You may be bogged down in too many ideas, too many partially started stories, etc. or you might be waiting for the ideal, perfect idea. You might be pushing too hard - or need a good kick in the rear.

You might be being notified of alarms and problems in some other part of your life (by that mystic unconscious, the other side of the brain [which is which? I never remember.], one of the superego, ego, id or parent, adult, child messes, or some other splinter of selfhood) - or you might be being pulled back to work on something you thought was "finished" but one of the parts of yourself doesn't want to let go.

You might be terrified of putting the stuff out in public (this often results in never-ending revision) for lots of reasons. You may be being too harsh on yourself, never even letting yourself realize that some of "that junk" is good!

Anyway, sit down and listen to yourself. Find out what "writers block" means to you, right now. Then think about how to deal with that particular problem. It may or may not mean "writing through" the "block".

(I have this picture of someone going to a doctor and saying "I can't walk right now." The doctor, without further examination, says "Keep walking." Needless to say, the kid with the broken leg or damaged tendons doesn't do herself any good following this advice. The other kid, who felt muscles stretch and pull and got nervous about finally exercising, says the advice was perfect. The kid who just got a new motorcycle spins merrily off into the sunset, ignoring the advice. Who's right?)

2. Something I find particularly annoying is my own personal feeling that if I'm not writing stories in a disciplined, rational way, then I'm "blocked." Oh, sure, I may be doing a lot of other stuff, but since the writing process isn't going the way my rational ego (?) says it should, then I'm not doing it "right." (Lurking perfectionism strikes again!) If that's the problem, part of the solution seems to be "letting go," - writing what pushes you, excites you, no matter whether it seems to match anyone else's style, markets, or whatever.

Then select out of the flood - learn to surf your own waves (?) - and watch out for the beach!

(funny - little kids like to play with blocks, and they know some of them are different! but we get older, all the blocks look the same, and we decide that stumbling on them is a problem. maybe it's time to sit down and check out the colors, build a dream palace for invisible friends to visit, or even try juggling...)

hey, mommie (or other artistic souls) - what do artists (painters, etc.) say or do when a particular theme, style, technique "stops working"? I don't think I've ever heard of "artistic block." They seem to talk more about trying out a new style, returning to basics, or stuff like that, don't they?

Original Posting: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 10:38:13 JST

On Writer's Block: A New Approach to Creativity
Victoria Nelson
Houghton Mifflin Company 1993

I think I got this through Book of the Month Club.

Even if you aren't blocked, I'd recommend getting a copy of this. Take a quick scan and put it on your bookshelf. Then when you are blocked, take it down again and let Victoria guide you to understand what kind of block you are experiencing and how to get back in synch with yourself. Seriously, this is like an encyclopedia of blocks that a writer may encounter, with good thoughts about what they mean and how to handle them.

(Hint for our Quote of the Day person - I thought many paragraphs would make nice, if slightly lengthy, quotes. e.g.)

"It is human nature to resist change. Only when an impassable roadblock suddenly rears up on our accustomed route (or rut) do we ever consider trying another path. That is why writer's block, guiding the writer always away from stagnation toward change and new possibilities, is such a useful, benign, and ultimately blessed instrument of all creative endeavor." p. 117 (a section on blocks due to Forcing Talent into the Wrong Mold)

For your Writer's First Aid kit... use when the muse quits!